Modern common wheat is a hexaploid crop formed by the hybridization of three ancestral species. As an ancient grain crop and the backbone of human granaries, the improvement of yield and quality of wheat has always been a focus of scientists' attention. The Institute of Modern Agriculture at Peking University, Weifang Modern Agriculture Shandong Provincial Laboratory, and National Key Laboratory of Wheat Breeding recently published an important achievement in the international academic journal Nature Genetics, which successfully drew the complete genome map of hexaploid wheat from telomeres to telomeres (T2T) for the first time internationally, achieving an accurate "puzzle" of the wheat genome from "head" to "tail" without gaps. Experts believe that this achievement is a new breakthrough in China's agricultural genomics research, which means that wheat genome research has entered a new stage and provided important technological support for high wheat yield and food security. The wheat genome can be called the "Mount Everest" of the plant kingdom. Not only is it huge in size, but the total length of its genetic code is nearly 40 times that of rice and nearly 5 times that of humans. Moreover, over 80% of the genome consists of repetitive sequences - which is like copying a long text thousands of times and then piecing it together, making it impossible for people to see its full picture and hindering the deepening of wheat research and breeding applications. According to He Hang, a researcher at the Institute of Modern Agriculture at Peking University, the team successfully constructed a hexaploid wheat T2T genome with approximately 14.5 billion bases using cutting-edge technologies such as high-precision sequencing and multiple algorithms. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences that exist at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes. For the first time, we have achieved seamless splicing of 21 pairs of wheat chromosomes from telomeres to telomeres. The genome is like a long line with multiple chromosomes. In the past, there were many missing parts on this long line of the wheat genome. We are the first in the world to fully connect this long line and assemble it from head to tail without any gaps, forming a complete wheat genome map. "Deng Xingwang, Dean and Chief Scientist of the Institute of Modern Agriculture at Peking University, said," This lays the foundation for future molecular design breeding. "Having a complete wheat genome map is like having a detailed map that can clearly analyze the genome. Some complex areas. It's like finding the small keys to each room in the wheat genome, providing new clues for studying the evolutionary process of these complex regions, "said He Hang. Using this high-quality genome map, the research team also annotated over 140000 high confidence protein coding genes, including many newly discovered disease resistant genes, providing new directions for wheat disease resistant breeding. Deng Xingwang said that this complete wheat genome map has significant advantages in completeness, continuity, and accuracy. It not only deepens people's understanding of wheat genome structure and evolutionary mechanisms, but also provides an example for analyzing the genomes of other complex polyploid crops. Based on this map, future scientists will be able to more accurately identify key genes related to yield, quality, and disease resistance, bringing breakthroughs to wheat variety improvement. (New Society)